Book Review: Bleach Volume 72 by Tite Kubo

The cover for this volume was taken from its Amazon buy page for review purposes under Fair Use doctrine.

Spoiler free summary: In Volume 72 of Bleach by Tite Kubo, Kyoraku is in danger, and Nano comes to help with a new weapon. More importantly Uryu encounters Ichigo.

Character: I don’t remember this volume as well as the previous one, but I remember coming away with a fairly positive feeling regarding Kyoraku (especially) and Nano. Those are two characters I feel got the right amount of screen time and development. The fact that I can’t remember much is sort of a warning sign for me, but I trust my general feeling in this case.

Exposition: I promise I’d remember a story that threw too much exposition my way. So whatever happened, they didn’t bog it down with too much of this.

Worldbuilding: I took a glance at a few pages, which oddly feature Urahara and Yoruichi. That much didn’t ring any bells, but it was clearly a combat chapter. Most of this feels like undercard to me. The worldbuilding is extremely diminished, but that makes sense given how much has been thrown at the reader in previous volumes.

Dialogue: This was probably better in one way (no 1980s cartoon banter), but worse in others. This volume was simply unremarkable in a lot of ways.

Description: Given that this is a volume composed of fight scenes, the art is pretty cool to look at.

Overall: It’s the typical pattern for this sequence. A particularly strong issue is followed up by a bit of a dud. At this point in a series, one would expect a degree of memorability that’s simply not present in this volume. I’m actually a big fan of Urahara, so I would have thought I’d remember it better. That doesn’t mean it’s bad so much as it means it’s not what someone would expect it to be at this point.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

Book Review: Bleach Volume 68 by Tite Kubo

Spoiler free summary: In Volume 68 of Bleach by Tite Kubo, Yhwach has murdered the soul king, and everything (literally) starts falling apart. All seems lost until Ukitake’s secret offers some hope. Kyoraku also has a plan, but that plan involves a terrifying enemy.

Character: There are a few moments here where we learn about Ukitake and Kyoraku. As per my frustration with this, the characters we’ve really had a lot of time with sort of fall off, but these two do have a nice arc that really builds their sympathy. They shine in this volume for different reasons. You learn why Ukitake always seems so sickly, and you learn just how clever and driven Kyoraku really is.

Exposition: This volume was probably lighter in this area than others. I think the dialogue still carried the bulk of the expository weight here, but given how it wasn’t spoken bravado during a fight, it felt fresh.

Worldbuilding: This volume expands the soul society. We finally see how everything sort of comes together as it relates to the monarchy (or more accurately the religion) of this world. It gets a bit tough to explain without spoilers. Still, this volume is a bit of a gem because it gave us this broader level, and it’s sort of the payoff for people reading this arc.

Dialogue: Again, because the things being discussed here aren’t the finer aspects of a character’s power or how they cleverly outfought the enemy, it feels fresh. There’s still a lot of conversation offering the history of the soul king. The thing is, in this case, it’s not so bad because we’re talking about old data. There aren’t a lot of ways to provide historical information. If you know a few, please feel free to say so in the comments below.

Description: This was interesting because we were seeing new places and new things. Most Shonen stuff is going to have epic fight scenes with awesome moves. The trick with this volume was that we see the world in a different way. Also, the world is crumbling, and that illustration is pretty cool.

Overall: This volume stands out because it has some nice character arc, and the world is expanded. I don’t know that it was done the best way, but it’s still cool information that lets us consider the history of this world more. I have the first light novel, and I mean to get to it at some point, but what interest me is this how this world is built around this concept, and that at least has me curious.

Thanks for reading,

Matt